If oil is discovered, less than 2000 acres of the over 1.5 million acres of the Coastal Plain would be affected.

Drill, and alternative energy are needed for secutiry of more stable supply of energy. Also, the goal is to graudally reduce energy costs to 2005 over a 30 year span. Rational people know that oil usuage gonna decline by 20% in the next 30 years, and more likely exploration of oil will get higher in price overtime, and cost gap for celloustic ethanol and natural gas will narrow. The goverment should cut taxes on people that give up cars as transport, and stop tax breaks for SUV hybirds. Also, reduce speed limits by 10mph on roads to allow usasge electric cars, and mopeds, scooters on roads. Higher tax on fuel inefficent engines, and tax incentives for auto makers to end production of SUVs period.

The oil companies have already proved that they have failed America......The oil companies have endlessly proven that they will do what it takes to make a profit and have done the average consumer no favors,

By the way.......diesel, gasoline, propane, fuel oil and natural gas are all fuels used in internal combustion engines that power everything from chainsaws and cars to supertankers, giant cruise ships and power generating stations.

I think the answer for the next few decades will have to be hybrid and electric combined with very efficient internal combustion engines to dramatically reduce fuel consumption and emissions for vehicles.

But the holy grail will be perfecting the hydrogen fuel cell......and ultimately.......fusion power

When Henry Ford told a New York Times reporter that ethyl alcohol was "the fuel of the future" in 1925, he was expressing an opinion that was widely shared in the automotive industry. "The fuel of the future is going to come from fruit like that sumach out by the road, or from apples, weeds, sawdust -- almost anything," he said. "There is fuel in every bit of vegetable matter that can be fermented. There's enough alcohol in one year's yield of an acre of potatoes to drive the machinery necessary to cultivate the fields for a hundred years."

Eric Jarvis, a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., said algae can be grown in the ocean or a desert pond, grow and feed on wastewater or literally eat air pollutants produced by a power plant.

Within three years, the Air Force wants algae systems capable of making 50 million gallons of fuel per year, Sayre said. He expects algae-based fuel to start becoming available to the public in three to five years.

Algenol’s system can produce 6,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year, far more than corn’s rate of 370 gallons per acre per year or sugar cane’s at 890 gallons per acre per year. Its process absorbs 90% of the CO2 that is fed to the algae bioreactors. Between 50-70% percent of the CO2 goes into ethanol.

agricultural refuse as cracked soy beans, rice and cotton seed hulls, grain sorghum, milo and jatropha and turns them into bio-crude oil.

Eric Jarvis, a senior scientist at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo., said algae can be grown in the ocean or a desert pond, grow and feed on wastewater or literally eat air pollutants produced by a power plant.

Within three years, the Air Force wants algae systems capable of making 50 million gallons of fuel per year, Sayre said. He expects algae-based fuel to start becoming available to the public in three to five years.

I am very against drilling in an ocean,and do not want to see yet another disastrous oil spill,alt energy will not do a Valdez disaster.

I wonder what drill baby drill McCain has to say about the oil companies shutting down drilling

I do not have a problem with drilling in moderation ...

Let us focus on the economy first.

Any new drilling they do now won't bring us anything for the next 10 years. I thought everyone knew that.

Petrobras, Brazil’s national oil company, shocked the oil world in November when it announced that its Tupi deepwater field offshore of Rio de Janeiro could hold five billion to eight billion barrels of oil. Analysts think there could be billions of barrels more in surrounding areas.

While the oil will be expensive and complicated to extract, Petrobras has said it expects to be producing up to 100,000 barrels a day from Tupi by 2010, and hopes to produce up to a million barrels a day in about a decade.

I honestly don't know, but if Brazil can start pumping in 2 years surely we can too?

A severe shortage of deep-sea drilling rigs will hold up exploitation of offshore oil for years, the New York Times reports. Existing rigs are booked solid for five years, and shipbuilders around the world are scrambling to fill dozens of new orders. Oil companies are frustrated by their inability to get at huge, newly discovered offshore fields.

Posted Jun 19, 08 3:22 AM CDT in World, Business

June 19, 2008

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/19/business/19drillship.html?_r=1&hp=&pagewanted=print



Demand is so high that shipbuilders, the biggest of whom are in Asia, have raised prices since last year by as much as $100 million a vessel to about half a billion dollars.

“The crunch on rigs is everywhere,” said Alberto Guimaraes, a senior executive at Petrobras, the Brazilian oil company that has discovered some of the most promising offshore oil but has been unable to get at it.

“Almost 100 percent of the oil companies are constrained in their investment program because there is no rig available,” he said.

As a result, drilling costs for some of the newest deepwater rigs in the Gulf of Mexico — the nation’s top source of domestic oil and natural gas supplies — have reached about $600,000 a day, compared with $150,000 a day in 2002.

These record prices have spurred a new wave of drill-ship construction. This boom could lead to renewed offshore oil exploration that would eventually bring more supplies to the oil market, and push down prices.

Already, 16 new drill-ships are scheduled to be delivered to oil companies this year — more than double the number delivered over the last six years combined. In fact, 75 ultra-deepwater rigs should be delivered from 2008 to 2011, according to ODS-Petrodata, a firm that tracks drilling rigs.

Shipyards from South Korea to Norway are working overtime to meet a huge influx of orders.

Robert L. Long, the chief executive office of Transocean, the world’s largest drilling company, said he has nine deepwater rigs under construction, eight of which are already under contract for periods ranging from four to seven years once they leave the shipyards. He expects to receive the ships between the beginning of 2009 and the end of 2010.

Transocean believes the deepwater market will continue to be constrained until at least 2012. Over three-quarters of the drill-ships currently under construction have already been contracted to oil companies eager to benefit from triple-digit oil prices, Mr. Long said.

Petrobras, whose full name is Petróleo Brasileiro, is expected to drive much of the growth in the booming new market. The company has outlined an aggressive program to increase its drilling capacity, and plans to contract or build 69 deepwater drill-ships by 2017.

Caracas Brazil?

I can't find that on Goggle Earth...

I say tough it up and continue to deal with whop we buy our oil from now,and try as hard as when we tried to put a man on the moon and get going on alternative energy.